Spank Children Research Paper

Within the past five years, I have noticed a dramatic increase of parents "sparing the rod." Discipline has decreased to the point that some pre-schools are not allowed to tell children "no," but instead suggest different things the child could do instead. Some family members of mine follow the same guidelines. They do not want to hurt their child in any way emotionally, so they do not use discipline at all. Instead of telling my cousins when they do something wrong, such as biting or pulling fist-fulls of hair, my aunt and uncle will praise their children for the things they did right and distract them from going back for another chomp.
I have read several articles recently on the negative effects of discipline, particularly spanking. Refraining from spanking children has become the new "normal" for many households. In the past three years of working in childcare, I have seen many different children from many types of homes. Interestingly enough, after spending about fifteen minutes with a child one is able to tell whether or not they were spanked. In my own experience, children who have been "spared the rod" tend to have more

negative interactions with other children. I have also noticed that they have a more difficult time following instruction from adults. For instance, I have two cousins who live in Florida. One was spanked as a discipline, and the other was not. The oldest child, who was spanked, has a higher respect for adults and does not pick fights when playing with other children. Even after being spanked, she is still a happy child who loves her family. Her younger sister who was not spanked is a different story. She directly disobeys the parents often for the enjoyment aspect. She does not play well with other children as she frequently bites them. The parents discipline the youngest girl, but she does not respond to anything they do.
There is a stark difference between spanking and hitting a child.

After many conversations with other individuals, I have come to the conclusion that much of the difference lies in whether or not you are spanking out of anger. Spanking when done out of anger is not discipline, it is abuse. When one spanks their child, it should be because no other disciplinary actions have worked. Parents should attempt to use methods such as time out before spanking their child. If other methods work then there is no reason the child should be spanked. As a child, time out was always sufficient as a disciplinary action for me. For my sister however, my parents had no such luck. They exhausted every form of discipline before finally resorting to spanking. The only reason they used spanking was because she did not respond to any other type of

discipline.
While I understand the concept behind what the author of "Spare The Rod" was trying to convey, I believe they were not entirely correct. I do not think that if a child is old enough to understand reason that they should be spanked. After a child can comprehend reasoning, they should receive punishments that have a correlation to what they did wrong. Children who are too young to understand cause and effect should only be spanked if they do not respond to any other form of punishment. I firmly believe that no child should be spanked out of anger. If they are spanked out of anger, it no longer qualifies as "spanking," but as "beating" which causes many psychological issues in the child.